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ODES: 



By Charles Leonard 
♦V.WMooreVAW 



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TO ISAAC R, PEN- 
NYPACKER, POET, 
CRITIC, FRIEND, I 
DEDICATE THESE 
PAGES 



Odes : 

:::By Charts:::: 
LeonardTVIoore 



(APR 921896/ ^^ 



Published for the Author 

Phlladelphiaj::j:::Eighteen 
Hundred and Ninety-six 






BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

Book of Day Dreams 

Banquet of Placios 

Poems, Antique and 
Modern 

Henry Holt & Co«;:;New York 



Copyright by 

Cbarlei Leonard Moore 

1896 



ODES 

Ode of the Vision 

Idola Theatri 

To America 

Elegy on Edward Allan Poe 

Ode on the Impressions of Boyhood 

Hymn to Cybele 

Hymn to Oceanos 

Hymn to Porphyrion 

Ode on the Revival of Color in Architecture 

Dirge for Summer 

The Funeral of the Forests 



ODE OF THE VISION 



Why, why so envious of the olive crown 

And all soon-fading emblems of renown ? 

The Poet, why should he 

A Memnon of to-morrow strive to be, 

Light turned to music on his trembling wire? 

Why should the Patriot tire 

His heart with labor and repeated loss, 

Rising still huger for some heavier cross? 

The Many do not so, though gay and brave 

Life's motley garb as best they may they wear, 

Breeding new armies for the impatient grave, 

Proud of their vantage of sun-favored air, 

Sensual and safe, if comfort comes 

The wind may blow elsewhere the sound of 

drums, 
Or gleam of glorious homes. 



ODE OF THE VISION 



II 



Whence came the warrant Nature never gave 

That sends the sons of song or deed to save 

Time from its own decay 

To wed perfection to our dying day 

Rebels from ruin ? Whence the sacrifice 

Life for the laurel prize? 

Whence the pursuit that gold mirage to find 

Which does before us gleam or dies behind? 

Yon oak its bronzed tubes and organ front 

Lifts for the Muse's use, but does not care 

If leaves do soothe the stops to whispering 

wont, 
Or if like trumpets peal the pipes left bare. 
Its course in calmness Nature takes, 
But Man untimely still the future wakes, 
Or moan for memory makes. 



in 

Ah see, the moon from yonder hill swings clear, 

With mellow lamp searching her crystal sphere ; 

But in our realm below 

Her ineffectual torches dimly go; 

Landmarks effaced, all things habitual, lose 

Their surety of use; 



ODE OF THE VISION 

The world grows foreign and all out of doors ; 
Masked revellers bear abroad the Bacchic laws : 
Not in this moontide jungle can the Soul 
Keep its clear purposed paths to ends foreknown, 
Shadows o'ertake it and upon it roll 
Reiterate gales from magic gardens blown ; — 
Tired sentinel, its fires grow dim, 
White arms are near, frank eyes dissolving swim, 
And the wine cups o'erbrim. 

IV 

A soundless footing stirs these tufted glades ! 

A sudden Shadow issues from the shades ! 

And lo, before me stands 

A stranger ! Aye, from yet unconquered lands ! 

Upon his brow seems carved the pointed wreath 

Of leaves that ward off death ; 

Kin to the bard who lulled Hell's guardian grim, 

Or Dante's brother, seared with flames like him, 

In the tranced frenzy of the moon he gleams. 

"No oracle or boding outcry, rolls 

From forth thy marble lips, statue of dreams, 

Thou frozen thought, thou nuncio of lost souls ; 

Majestically movest thou on 

With robes that seem to trail oblivion 

Over earth's massy throne." 



ODE OE THE VISION 



"I Guesclin am. The sound my spent name 

makes 
Is as the echo when a bubble breaks, 
And all I was or did 
Like unwarmed germs in earth's dark chamber 

hid: 
No gain here take I for a tragic death; 
Yet do I wear this wreath ! 
Me, me, once did the Present too, enfold, 
The floating moment in its gauze of gold, 
My Pleasure House kept summer ever in, 
Rich with the leisures and the pomps of life, 
Deep alcoves shrined the god of wanton sin, 
With kisses were the orange allies rife, 
And art too from the dalliance sprang, 
Quick jostling rhymes like chimes perpetual 

rang, ^ 
And godlike voices sang. 



VI 

Then come a season, when that dearest thing, 
Unknown how dear, my Country, felt the sting 
Of outrage, tyranny, 
And something lionlike awoke in me. 



ODE OF THE VISION 

To new occasion seemed I native born 

And puffed aside with scorn, 

Like summer's idlest guests of thistle-down, 

Youth's follies and the trivial banquet crown. 

Then from Love's fires and Verse's airs I made 

A forge, a forge for all the thunderbolts ; 

War, war, I raised, my Country's youth arrayed, 

Thronging. about me like unbroken colts, 

And led them forth to fight — but O, 

Unpracticed valor sank before the blow 

The tyrant could bestow. 



VII 

Prison ! Hate, Death were my enthroned Powers. 

Garbed in grey went the penitential Hours. 

Knelt I to these? Not so ! 

I rose to dare a second overthrow. 

I snapped my chains. Tools were they for my rage 

To pierce my massy cage. 

Doors broke! Men died! I might escape; might 

fly! 
For Guesclin no escape but Victory ! 
A doom I went that does not brook arrest; 
I reached the palace, past the guards, and there, 
Like the sun mid the blazon of its West, 
The courtier circled monarch gilt the air. 



ODE OF THE VISION 

One step, one stroke! To earth he bowed. 
I held my imbued hands unto the crowd 
And ''Freedom" shrieked aloud. 

VIII 

They wavered, wavered as a field of wheat 

Run over by the wind's divided feet, 

Which here and there disclose 

Red poppies mid the pallid pulsing rows; 

So in the crowd rose figures of dark flame, 

Till all upon me came. 

Thou face of Death, thou brightness beyond name, 

What are the visions that thy look does frame? 

One by one risen my phantom days did show, 

Each in the sorry garland of its prime, 

I shut them from my eyes. I shrank to go 

Where the Immortals judge the acts of time. 

I fell. I rose amid the Dead. 

Then first since boyhood's bloom and blushes 

fled 
Tears, tears, these iron eyes shed. 

IX 

Large levels of enameled meads I saw, 
With flashing hills about, that, diverse, wore 



IO 



ODE OF THE VISION 

The wreaths of their rich walls, 

And in the distance woods and waterfalls, 

And cloudy, crowded height uppiled on height 

Of architectures bright, 

And amid all, figures that playing went 

As children would were they omnipotent, 

Turning to flames, trees, waters as they chose, 

Themselves their region's freshness and its light, 

And separate, cloistered, all-together, close, 

Minions of meditation and of might, 

Came they whom Fame unmatched allows, 

Earth's violet-crowned victors and the brows 

That mark Thought's lofty house. 



x 

Then rang a voice there that was ecstacy. 
"Hail Guesclin, hail thou partner of our sky; — 
Look not abashed, nor fear. 
Strength urged by Love, the certain password 

here, 
The great award and final ransom wins ; 
Ay, though cast out for sins 
Strong spirits there be — even them our conclave 

notes 
When up from Hill their stormy music floats, 
That time, nor distance, nor disguise of pain, 



1 1 



ODE OF THE VISION 

Nor the eternal mandate on their lips, 

Can rob of joy or of its right restrain, 

And Heaven knows its peers though in eclipse; 

Austere regard from foes is won, 

And mutual looks twixt ordered brows do run; — 

They too have dared and done." 



XI 

Brother farewell ! To men I am a shade 

And unremembered even to upbraid ; 

Learn thou in Time's frail days 

The pay is nothing, nothing is the praise ; 

Elsewhere the crowns are woven, the palms are 

knit, 
Elsewhere the judges sit, 

And the great Masters guard the immortal prize 
With hope and expectation in their eyes, 
Who when he comes that has on earth begun 
Tasks that the vigil of the skies alone 
Can finish, rise and thundering as one 
Unto this youngest yield their oldest throne. 
But him they give who does refrain 
From trial — from the struggle's glorious pain, 
The death of their disdain. 



12 



IDOLA THEATRI 



Away with those false powers 
Who boast to draw their lineage far 

From some Saturnian fabled seed, 
Or those whom Fate's malignant star 

Has armed against man's holiest need, 
Futile superiors of the incensed Hours. 

Let kings their brows uncrown, 

And let the great step down 
From chariots rolling o'er the earth with noise ; 
And let their heralds of prevailing voice 

Wealth and Rumor, vainly strive 

The cry that once on them did live 

With its echoes to revive. 
In vain ! The tumult makers soon are gone 

To practice tongues unknown — 
Not envy bids the glorious and the fair 

Fade from the vivid book of life and fame, 



13 



ID OLA THEATR1 

Fate tells them they are transient tenants there, 

Only a trick of Nature with a name ; 
Nay Nature takes the step for them, so yielding 

Her purple mantle and her crimson blood, 
Star by star losing from her brow, nor shielding 

Her mountain limbs from Time's all-eating 
flood ; 
Her best supremacy forgot as soon 

As Summer brags o'er Spring or Night o'er 
Noon 



Yet something stays, or change itself were sent 
Unknown, unnoted and unevident, 
Is it those rivals at the opposed gates 

From mighty bows their moment arrows 
speeding, 
So, as by turn each conquers or abates, 

Dusk brings forth dreams or Day its flocks 
comes leading? 
The roseate fire that burns the heavens clear, 

Or that masked fellow of far hidden Fate, 
No past need honor or to-morrow fear ; — 

They are the builders of the temple great. 
Yet idle workmen they, 
And all their action but a phantom play, 
Till the true Immortals, come 



14 



ID OLA THEATRI 

Motionless and blind and dumb 

Their nothing add to Nature's sum. 
Who then are they whose haunts remotest are 
Beyond the foldings of the farthest star? 

As eagles at the sun 

We gaze on shapes that run 
About us and about in eddying maze, 

Till from these objects seen more deep, 
Or from our eyes, or mutual born, 

The final forms of Being leap, 
Certain at last, by Life unworn, 

Nor lost in Time or Space. 



Risen like unsetting suns 

Come the crowned, the conquering Ones 

Singly first, then crowding fond 

Below, above and yet beyond. 

On mere Nature's ground displayed 

Once beheld they may not fade ; 

Or throned far or gliding near, 

Lords of distance and the year : — 

See them on the Muse's glass 

Note and name them as they pass ; 

Love, that first ordained thing ; 

Valor, gayly glittering ; 

Joy, attired like a bride 



in oi.a Tin: ati:: 

With Truth bending by her side ; 

Wisdom, silent, gentle, sad; 

Inspiration, lyric-mad; 

Hope, the child, and maiden, Grace ; 

Honor with unblotted face : 

And more — and more immortal yet — 

Forms that only dreams beget : 

One and all they torches bear, 

And they lean across the air, 

Or descend with stately mien 

To mix with men, yet not be seen. 

The poet feels their breath inspire 

And the rapt verse is winged with fire ; 

They light the warrior to his fate 

Foreseen, forlorn, yet fortunate ; 

They touch the maiden's modest cheeks, 

And in that flush the future speaks ; 

Nor this alone. Through them the path 

Of spring a second blossoming hath ; 

They kindle with a sudden thrill 

The sunset fire on yonder hill ; 

They bid the blazoned morning break 

With answer to our human ache ; 

They call the starry choir to rise 

The glad musicians of the skies : 

Earth and the soul of man they fill 

And best are those who work their will. 



16 



ID OLA THEATRI 

Then why should we bow down, 

Or let the dazzled eyelid droop 
To such pale shows of seeming fires 

As rule or riches yield their dupe 
Whose warrant with his breath expires 
Lost to the authentic sign of right renown. 
To whom the Genius gives 
The torch that quenchless lives 
To flame o'er war, or light some deathless 

page, 
Or, more apparent, blaze upon the stage ; 
His is the true, undying day. — 
And as best things are born of play 
Springs from the Theatre's array 
Figures full oft that fade the daylight glare, 

Portents of fierier air. 
The cue is spoke ; and on the threshold stands 

One living yet untouched by life's alloy, 
Not born of man, nor decked by human hands, 

Beauty's own being or incarnate Joy; 
So vital is the instant impulse given, 

With such warm, vivid powers the thing is 
rife, 
That the brief vision more reports of heaven 
Than even the vigil of a good man's life ; 
Who, meek with honors, by tradition mild 
Deems it not merit for that fortune smiled. 



17 



ID OLA THEATRI 

Ah ! from the God, the God, the stage began 
In that old Grecian home of Muse and Man, 
From Bacchus rose, who haughtily disdaining 
The dull delusions of the things that are 
(Wine cup and Indian flight and revel waning) 
His actors bade portray the high and far! 
And as clouds may the moon augment or screen, 
As leaves may break the winds they yet 
betray, 
Those guests of life made great or came between 
The full heroic passions of that day : — 
Used to their periods 
Their miracles and august dooms of gods, 

Pride through the Grecian concourse ran, 
And none stepped of all that clan 
Lesser than Olympian. 
Rome, Rome then saw those pupils of Renown, 
But the blood-snuffing eagles beat them down, 
And so for many a day 
Most gentle suppliants, they 
Homeless, unhonored o'er the wide earth went, 
And knocked at many a castle door, 

And spread their scenes in mouldy 
inns, 
The burden of the fate they 'bore 

Unnoticed 'mid Time's noisy dins 
And battle argument. 

18 



IDOLA THEATRI 

But now proud heads again they lift 
And, laurelled, they repay the gift ! 
Up Memory ! Do thy work ! Recall 
Thy renowned visions all ! 
Let the glittering one of France 
Like an Autumn day advance ; 
Autumn decked with red ensigns, 
Berries black and poison vines, 
Fruited deep and flowering grim 
Flaming to the sunset's rim. 
Nor less he — to art most true — 
Moliere might say ''cousin " to. 
Then let England's son appear 
Phantasy to domineer ; 
Something great, or good or ill, 
Power self torn, but power still ; 
Gloomy he, but from his side 
See the moon of acting glide : 
Mightiest of the mimic race 
Comes he of the haunted face, 
The figure of that lofty line 
Melancholy made divine. 
Then the studious one, whom death 
Brought at last the evied wreath. 
Move, O, verse, with mournful tread, 
And music sob for Neilson dead ! 
Her radiant head, her sunny eyes 



T9 



I DO LA THEATRI 

Pay Orcus for our upper skies : 

Long, long upon her grave let live 

The laurels that her lovers give ! 

Then let the star-like form sweep by 

Star as human-touched as high ; 

She whose foreign accents reach 

Like fragments of celestial speech. 

The poet named one ends the train 

The youngest ever called to reign, 

A goddess sprung to sudden view, 

Spring's image, and the Morning too ; 

Whose touch, whose look, whose voice does ope 

The mansions of immortal hope. 



The silver trump of praise 

Or level or uplift is blown, 
Then falters, lowers and departs 

And leaves these powers to their own, 
To their proud homes in human hearts, 
Or blows one note to cheer their emulous race. 
But now on air be borne 
The brazen blast of scorn, 
For art debased and great ambitions furled 
That make a worser and ignobler world 
Of the high imperious stage, 
That should loom above the age 



20 



ID OLA THEATRI 

Fired with the Muse's noble rage. 
Ah, woe upon the wreaths and the rewards 

The easy gotten gauds ! 
Here is the flaw that dwindles to a day 

The art that works with characters of flame, 
Its votaries of the hour do repay 

Then pass on careless of its farther fame. 
Only from martyrdoms of thought and feeling, 

From gaping wounds, defeats and gloomy 
death, 
Is born at last the lightning flash, revealing 

Strange heights that woo men from the 
trodden path. 
The great world gazes on the acted scene 
But as a brief of what itself has been. 



Then banished be both world and stage deceits : — 
Broke be the sceptres of those double cheats ; 
And in some hollow of the forest hills, 

Some amphitheatre where birds are winging, 
Where earth lets out its music in its rills, 

Where censer boughs their perfumed loads 
are swinging; 
There, there to rear a temple and a shrine 

With Druid altars open to the sky, 
With the great Seasons for each decked design, 



21 



ID OLA THEATRI 

With natural lights that sweep in order by ; — 
And to its service great 
Let maiden, youth and age be dedicate ; 
Boys with torched triumphant eyes, 
And maidens breathing of the skies, 
And old Experience, wistful wise; 
And let these priests on slopes of afternoon, 
Or on wide spaces smoothed by the moon. 
Act and enact again 
Madness that keeps men sane, 
The dream that makes reality endure ; — 
And so the solemn service keep 

Thro' days, thro' years, thro' cycles vast, 
Till the world own the influence deep, 
And know perfection and the past, 
And be less proud, less sure, 



Then shall rich ideal hues 

Blend with the tints of common use, 

Gods and heroes, to and fro, 

From dream to life and back shall go ; 

And as Grecian women saw 

Marble shapes of beauteous awe 

Round their beds, whose glory they 

Gave to forms of mortal clay, 

So shall be earth's newer line 



22 



ID OLA THEATRI 

The children of those shows divine ! 
Shakespeare's rainbow-painted mime, 
And the Frenchman's mighty rhyme, 
With whatever older art 
Or newer genius can impart, 
Shall upon our platform strive 
Than the living more alive. 
Laws and manners shall confess 
Their rich human waywardness ; 
Fortune's hardly heaped store 
Shall be doubled o'er and o'er ; 
Philosophy in form shall rise, 
And the pulpit shall have eyes ; 
Grace and beauty shall translate 
The unadorned book of Fate, 
And give to all whose souls aspire 
Each his several fond desire, 
Add to the great whose gifts allure 
The worthier virtues of the poor, 
And let earth's humbler tenants share 
The largess of life's freer air ; 
Till these all with one accord 
Shout the world invoking word — 
" Bring on your chorus, Comedy, 
Teach us that mankind is free, 
Teach us mirth and song and dance 
Are our glad inheritance ; 



23 



IDOLA THEATRI 



Tragedy assume your mask, 
Show man equal to his task, 
Show 'mid all your thunder roll 
The greatness of the human soul!' 



24 



TO AMERICA 



Barbarian Europe, blood-emblazoned, rich 
With pageants of imperishable things, 
Ideals blooming in each ivied niche, 

Clusters its banners at the feet of kings, 
But thou O Land, O Liege, hast homage double ! 
Like some young prince thou tryest earth's 
sovran round, 
While he who wore it last with anguished trouble 
Looks on his heir by youth and puissance 
crowned 
Angelic-eyed, with adolescent splendor 

Gleam thy limbs, glow thy locks in bronzed 
wonder; 
If grace is so august, can grandeur render 
Thy marvel more? Can music gain by 
thunder? 



25 



TO AMERICA 

Yet thou who dost enchant 
Shall basilisk be and Gorgon glances shower, 
For fools do mock thy prodigy of power 

And awe the witless want ; 
And hate strikes at thee on thy new throne set 
Between one old world and an older yet. 

Medea thou, what place 
Secret hast used? What herbs? What magic 

spoken ? 
That from the world's list of the maimed and 
brokeni 
Thou rearest thy vigorous race? 
Long have men dreamed thee by wild visions 
haunted, 
Hesperidean, Hyperborean fables, 
Saw hung o'erhead all fruits all mortals wanted, 
Saw set beneath the gleaming banquet 
tables. — 
Hast thou not bettered promise? What 
remains? 
O'er pastures deep thy lofty herds are driven, 
Plenty o'ercrowds the vistas of thy plains, 

And Peace looks on thee from the courts of 
Heaven ! 
Thou hast the oceans for thine azure walls, 

Thy unbarred gates scarce hear a sentinel's 
tread, 

26 



TO AMERICA 



Whatever fury chance, what fate befalls, 

The hour has struck and man uplifts his 
head! 



Well thou wast, O Land of lands, 

Ruled first by rugged hands, 

By pioneers who nobly struck 

Their manhood out by work, not luck, 

Who, scorning to count up descents, 

Took at first charge free Nature's rents, 

Packed dynasties on dusty shelves 

And trusted men unto themselves. 

Such their heirs, whose temper yet 

The ice-brook plunge can not forget, 

With these thou laughest and livest remote 

From man's mournful, minor note, 

Groans and death cries and that most 

Unpleasing echo earth can boast, 

Servile clamors that acclaim 

Many a merely mortal name. 

Hostess thou to all who need, 

Kind in word and kind in deed ! 

And the guests that with thee troop, 

Like that fair Florentine group 

Who, when Death through cities went, 

Sought a blissful banishment, 



2 ? 



TO AMERICA 

Make trial of the arts that please 
The imperishable fruits of ease. 
In thy gaudy, colored air, 
Rise thy swift-sprung cities fair, 
Leaning on each other linked, 
Like girls in bevies indistinct ; 
And beyond may sight pursue 
Rich shadows of thy farther view, 
Landscapes mottled o'er with wealth, 
Wind-blown hills, the homes of health, 
Far-drawn pastures, gleaming floods, 
Zoned by thy elemental woods ; 
League on league till Fancy fail 
Spreads thy many-peopled pale ; 
Where the Twilight sweepeth slow 
Ruddy thy farmhouses glow, 
Where the Morn is rising red 
Smoke wreaths beckon still ahead ; 
And thy lands no guardians lack, 
The old gods do wander back ; 
All those true, eternal kings 
The earth's foison breeds and brings, 
Who still find themselves at home 
Where felicity does come; 
Golden Ceres there upbraids 
Her sad errand to the Shades, 
Bacchus roams with all his crew 



TO AMERICA 

Indias that he never knew, 

And the universal Pan 

Pipes as when the world began. 

So, inviolable Queen, 

Thou mid thy guards and guests art seen, 

Content till Time to birth shall bring 

The new, inevitable Spring, 

When rising up from rest, thy light 

Shall flood the old world nests of night, 

And draw from thence with roses twined, 

The rescued spirit of mankind. 



Keep, Sacred Land, still in thy shining track, 
Knead thy new life with yeast of thy past 

worth, 
For past thou hast, though rivals sneer the lack 
Deeming them witness of thy wonder-birth. 
Thine are the deeds divine to every mortal, 
Not done in purlieus or in dungeon graves, 
But in the world's eye, at earth's eminent portal — 
Thine is Columbus' pathway o'er the waves; 
Thine is the flight of Freedom when she vaunted 
Her iron-bound Bible for her battle banner ; 
Thine the rich riot of life that flamed and 

flaunted 
At Raleigh's heels by sea and broad Savannah ; 



29 



TO AMERICA 

Thine Leon's phantom spring 
(Ah, had he reached its side it had been wholly 
A marvelous fount of new-found melancholy, 

A memory-troubled thing); 
Thine the great grave where dark De Soto 

sleeps — 
A new Columbus of the forest deeps. 

Or, turning from such themes, 
From single dramas to thy tide of glories, 
Thou art the peer of Greece in those proud stones 

Where battles bear out dreams ; 
For twice, idea-urged, hast thou arisen, 
Not moved by passion or a prince's halter, 
And burst her bonds who half time sits in prison 

And poured thy best lives out on Freedom's 
altar : 
And where Fate called thee thou hast spurned 
fatigues, 

So ever on thy marches' westward border 
Ran a thin line of blood four hundred leagues, 

Chaos before — behind a world of order : 
Dispatched such deeds : And now for what 
comes next 

Thou waitest in thine invulnerable West, 
Blazoning more large thy living-lettered text, 

" Chance and the tools to those who use 
them best." 



30 



TO AMERICA 

Earth is rounded ! Hope no more 

Builds beacons on some beckoning shore 

If man erect may live man's peer 

The last flight for the standard's here. 

Come it may and come it will, 

War's obliterating thrill, 

The ring of fire about our coasts, 

The answering flame in patriot hosts, 

Thy goddess-aided cry that rolls 

Terror on thy foeman's souls : 

Many a hero struck with death 

Shall praise thee with his passing breath 

And lean upon his sword to note 

Far in front thy banners float. 

If thou some trival check mayst meet 

Time with thee again shall treat: 

Of all his children, as he runs, 

He chooses but one heir at once, 

Throws on one face the prescient bloom, 

The dye of glory or of doom ; 

So billows throng, but seldom have 

The tramplings of a tidal wave, 

So do the planets seldom show 

In one propitious hour aglow. 

Thee, auguries and acts concur 

To crown To-morrow's arbiter. 

Yet even thee no power can stay 



3* 



TO AMERICA 

Unaltered to the utmost day; 
The adorable dawnings of thy Spring 
Shall change into some fiercer thing, 
Thy Autumn spread a fiery shade 
To fill men's vision ere it fade. 
And the stark sculptures of thy frost 
Shall show far years what earth has lost. 
So the world's races rise and wend 
Through tumult to a tranquil end ; 
So travel on, 'twixt gate and gate 
All that is fair and all that's great. 
Then wake, my country, wake and know 
The impassioned hour of godlike glow, 
The life, the flush in every vein, 
Things easier done than e'er again ; 
The inspired touch that trebles force, 
The stars and thee tied to one course ; 
Accept thy privilege to be great, 
Wear like a flower thy roseate fate; 
Disdain the tangled paths of gain, 
Disperse thy wealth like kindliest rain ; 
Let Genius guide thee high and far, 
For arms and arts unselfish are; 
Who gives himself the world believes 
And grants the sacred laurel leaves; 
Make of thy men, as God designed, 
Rich mansions with fair pictures lined, 



3 2 



TO AMERICA 

Mend, not thy women, but their lot, 
Angels awhile on earth forgot: — 
Thus mayst thou do, and doing, reach 
With splendors of the shafts of speech, 
With burnished arms, with arts of peace 
The lustre of a greater Greece. 



33 



ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN POE. 



Ah ! many, many pipes are blown afield, 
Old reeds, new notched, of hoar antiquity : 
And many shepherds woo the muse to yield 

Some magic, matchless cry : 
Some murmur of the old immortal art, 
That made divine with ghosts of the dear dead 
Baiae and the Mediterranean, 
Till with eternal tears her tragic heart 
Wells over, and her feet we thought had fled 

Turn back to us again. 
Then why should he who was as great as they, 
Graced by her breath with unforgotten strains, 
The mightiest singer in our minstrelsy, 
Sleep on unsung beneath his new-world sod? 
Though pipe nor lute unto my touch obey, 
Music is in my heart, music that pains, 



34 



ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN POE 

Music and pity for a shape passed by, 

Music for music's god, — 
And for the master of all shadowy fears, 
Shuddering anguish and more sudden tears. 



For he was not of mortal progeny; 
Born in the under-world of utter woe, 
Sad, sombre poet of Persephone, 

His home he did forego, 
And came among our unacquainted meads, 
Pale, mid all statues of a mortal birth, 
Pure, mid all images that knew not death. 
What cared he for day's gaudy, glowing deeds, 
The fiery-blowing flowers of the earth, 

Or the wind's lusty breath? 
Still did he long for the black shades and 

deep, 
Still for the thickets inextricable, 
Still for the empty shadows of the gods, 
Still for the hueless faces of the dead ; 
Still did he wander backward in his sleep, 
Down the long slopes and intricate of hell, 
Still sang he of his echoless abodes, 

His visions vanished ; 
Still to new instruments of a new art 
He gave the fiery passion of his heart. 



35 



ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN POE 

In vain for him the constellations rode 
Tranquil and large on their eternal heights ; 
In vain each changing day came with its load 

Of unforeseen delights; 
In vain rose every god, in every hue 
Of love, of languor, passion, joy or wrath ; 
In vain all visions of the air did come; 
He knew the secret of his birth ; he knew 
The low, the lost, the oft-lamented path, 

That led unto his home. 
He had not seen stern Aides in a dream, 
Nor the wan gaze of sad Persephone. 
Nor the bronzed architecture of hell's gates, 
The sanguine forest overshading all ; 
He had not heard the lapping of that stream, 
Lethe, in fancy only, nor did he 
Alone, in visions, listen to the Fates' 

Low laughing in that hall. 
Too wise he was with memories of his youth, 
To change, for gaudy shows, death's awful truth; 



All secrets were disclosed unto his glance, 
He saw each ultimate, high tragedy, — 
Saw Juliet, rising from her second trance, 

Heard waked Ophelia's cry; 
Doubt not, all sentenced souls before him past, 



36 



ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN FOE 

Infant to penance, or one thing with pain, 
Alike forever new to agonies, 
That on his heart, their pallid looks aghast 
Sunk, and forever rose to him again 

With their eternal eyes. 
Doubt not he sought some figure wandering 

there, 
Doomed to her lover to be ever strange, 
Some splendor banished from being as a star, 
Fallen, alas! by sorrow, — not by sin, — 
That he sang to her in that sullen air 
Till their souls grew impatient of all change, 
Slow pacing as hell's heavy hours are, 

Till their lives seemed to win 
A happiness beyond the hope of man, 
Ethereal, effortless, Elysian. 



Methinks I see them, wandering in the glooms 
Of the great pillared forests of that realm, 
Roofed by the arches of bright-burnished blooms 

Hung as to overwhelm ; 
Or allied in a reason more august, 
The Autumn of that awful foliage, 
When the blood-painted leaves turn into black, 
Lingering, while upon their souls are thrust 
Imaginations, vaster than engage 

37 



ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN POE 

Their vision-potent track. 
I see his fiery eyes divide the night, 
I see her perfect beauty, faded to 
Memorial and melancholy grace, 
Their parted limbs for union eloquent; 
I see the passion, the desire, the might 
That is not linked to any earthly hue, 
That is not set in any mortal face, 

Love ever evident, 
I see and turn — and on the earth behold 
Fruition faint and fleeting hours of gold. 



Forget the sunset's gorgeous alchemy, 
The magic of the frail and faded moon, 
The pale, perpetual wizards of the sky, 

The dread enchanter, — noon. 
O, dwellers on the ever-dreaming earth, 
Throw off the charmed habit of your life, 
The comfortable glamor of your sleep ; 
Severe indeed is death and harsh the girth, 
Naked the valleys of eternal strife, 

Single of hue, the deep ; 
But real is his great figure that does rear 
Those livid horizons' illumining. 
Rapt he, before whose usual act docs fall 
The excess of all earth's existences ; 



38 



ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN FOE 

He sees no pause in the processional fear, 
Monotony no dumb relief can bring, 
No license of such dreamy interval, 

As in earth's busy press ; 
But passion comes, passion that never fades, 
Unto the tragic singer of the Shades. 



But, ah ! he left, he vanished from that scene, 
The intense limits of the world of woes, 
And on earth's theatre of tender green 

A blasted vision rose, 
Mist-managed pageantry from ocean slips, 
Built faded from fresh foam, and meteors fall 
Black, blank upon the earth o'er which they 

shone ; 
But never darken they in such eclipse 
As he, so radiant in the under hall, 

When rose he to our own : 
Faded was his eternal grace of limbs, 
Thin rang his voice, through the thick-thronged 

hills, 
Faint were the fiery changes of his face, 
Burned out the passion of his awful eyes, 
Starred, supreme shape of night, whom daylight 

dims, 
Viewless he went amid life's garish ills ; 



39 



ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN FOE 

He could not wait 'till twilight owned his race, 

Dusk, his new dynasties; 
Wan, vacant presence and neglected guest, 
Earth placed no throne for him, whereon to rest. 



Poppy, therefore, and every poisonous growth 
Took he, that could transport his soul away 
From his wide prison ; — for his eyes were loth 

And weary of the day. 
And every steed he chartered, that did go 
A little on the journey from the earth; 
And joined each distance-seeking caravan, 
Where e'er the waves did roll, or the winds 

blow 
O'er this world's abrupt and precipitous girth, 

Swiftly his spirit ran. 
Drunk with imaginations, drunk with wine, 
Drowsy with dreams or waking with desires, 
He sat at Pleasure's feet and would not rise, 
Enamored of oblivion in vain, 
Pleasure, no more smooth-lipped, no more divine, 
But burning with unfathomable fires, 
With melancholy in her mighty eyes, 

With proud lips curbing pain. 
Long there he sat, while in a cup she gave 
Most bitter drink for thirst, and the salt wave. 



40 



ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN FOE 

Last Death arose. — Then he, the hungry-eyed, 
Rose to the spectre, with embraces rude, 
Love's tender violence unto a bride, 

With low-toned words long wooed, 
There was a little music to be heard, 
There was a kindling splendor in the air, 
And he, our king of song, had come and gone. 
Earth felt no more than if a twig had stirred, 
With some bird slipping off, onward to fare, 

And men seemed not to mourn. 
The pageant of the hours passes on, 
Earth has its harvests, wakes, and works, and 

lives ; 
Glory and gladness, like twin gods, do sway, 
And nought is gone of our accustomed joys ; 
But when the year unto an end has drawn, 
When Autumn fills the air with fugitives, 
When sadness rises with the rising day, 

Then do we miss his voice 
Who knew the sombre heart that nature wears 
Under her blazonings and gorgeous airs. 



Now may we make our plaint, and bid him peace, 
And say " farewell" who said not " welcome" too; 
O mourning mouths, be done your music, cease 
Praising and pitying, too ! 



4i 



ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN FOE 

He needs no carved trophies on his tomb, 
No sober figures for his funeral urn, 
No requiem of loud song or trumpet blasts, 
A greater homage yet shall he assume, 
An altar in each heart for him shall burn 

As long as sorrow lasts. 
As long as Autumn, or the dim twilight, 
Usurp the seats of Summer or throned Day, 
As long as shadows thicken in our minds, — 
He reigns, who was the very spirit of strife, 
Who was primeval to the hoary night, 
Who was the god and image of decay ; 
And all the tossed waves and storm-stricken 
winds 

Of distressed, human life 
Answer to him, who, with the secret stars, 
Rises o'er chaos to renew its wars. 



42 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF 
BOYHOOD. 



Tis gone ! Her spirit's gone that so much gave ! 
On every darkest hour there dawns a worse : 
The leaf falls and the wind blows o'er her grave, 
And the stars walk with torches all reverse 
Before the noble earth which is her funeral 
hearse. 

Ye Muses with commemorative eyes 
Give me one night of memory, though I earn 
Blacker to-morrows for my only prize ; 
One happy hour, although I must return 
To that oak-guarded spot where gleams her 
ruddy urn. 

Incarnate gladness was she and she drew 
To her all beings of a like address ; 
Hence then with berries of the deadly yew, 



43 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 

Hence with the cypress, dismal to oppress, 
But roses, roses bring to deck her grave and 
bless ! 



Earth left she through its gateway most august, 
Gold Autumns arches, which again o'er-bend, 
Wherefrom, perfected paintings of the dust, 
Souls of the moment, the red leaves descend 
But lack her deathless spark that can evade 
their end. 



O Muses with commemorative eyes, 
Leave your heroic games, your pastoral tasks, 
The iteration of your histories, 
Your mouthings through innumerable masks, 
Few, simple, homebred words are all your sup- 
pliant asks. 



Old as the pyramids are to the race 
Is his walled birthplace unto every man ; 
It is his cradle and his starting place, 
And all antiquity no farther can 
Outstretch, than those long streets where first 
his time began — 



44 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 

Mountains and fields no heraldries unfold : 
Only in foam is writ the sea's renown ; 
Dateless the acorn sinks in earth's soft mould ; 
The Robin's fortress and the Squirrel's town 
No monuments upbuild but Winter bare breaks 
down. 



But in those citied paths where men are pressed 
The lineaments of all the past are seen, 
A second architecture and the best; 
Soft and aeriel splendors come between 
Our souls and what were else but a brick-builded 
screen. 



Grey, quiet, simple, in the city's heart 
My house of birth is. Life's full, rushing throng 
A little round about it seems to part — 
An eddy set when all the place was young — 
And hearts may there grow old unruffled and 
unwrung. 

Should I but strike those bricks I would draw 

blood ; 
Those windowed vistas built are from my dreams ; 
Those trees are decked out in my every mood, 

45 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 

And yon gold lamp that down the distance 

streams 
That is my sun and not the one that over 

Europe gleams. 

There with most timid sweep, like some young 

bird 
Pattering the paths of air with unsteered wings, 
In earliest trial circled I. Unblurred 
Everywhere images of novel things 
Rose. Much have I forgot but their fresh 

imprint clings. 

Or farther drawn where the green country, 

slipped 
As a dog thrusts its nose into one's hand — 
Amid the houses — glittering, dewy dipped — 
I saw the unsuspected streams unspanned, 
And woods that thickly stood about the sloping 

land. 

What wonders there ! Treasuries with gold 

afledge 
Down dropping gifts of chestnut or shellbark! 
What berries lurking in the hostile hedge ! 

46 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 

What honeyed locusts ! What red plumes to 

mark 
The venturer returned at eve unto the parent 

ark! 

And then the call to games and conflict high 
With my embattled comrades : the snow fort 
Upheaped with its crystal armory, 
Bade to be taken in heroic sort ; 
The curved sticks wherewith the pavements rang 
in sport: 

The Kites we launched into the Summer air, 
Proud control what soared with bird and cloud ; 
The ghost games in our churchyard corner lair 
Trancing our blood till none dared speak aloud 
By winter-withering looks of summoned beldams 
cowed. 



Or by the fire, whispers of that remote 
Unlawful, visionary, haunting thing, 
The drowsy night owl, who in downy coat 
Spies for the witch feast or the goblins ring, 
Where on the sward old oaks fantastic shadows 
fling. 

47 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 

Oftenest about the town I went alone 

And watched the toil and traffic : saw how wields 

The smith his tools, or mason squares the stone ; 

Saw in rich colored markets all the fields ; 

Or on the wharves the silver that the ocean yields. 

Or paced the dark, rain-glittering, gas-lit streets 
And saw through opened door or casement, flare 
Ruddiest glimpses of unknown retreats, 
But thin partitioned from the common air, 
And my heart throbbed to think what warmth 
and joy were there. 

What banquets and what bridals ! What desire 
Glowing in gracious faces! Holier yet 
What feigned marble of some girls white fire, 
Who all day long half-shrouded, at day set 
Disrobes — but seen by angels in her chamber met. 

Or when the green intruder Spring let loose 
His arrows on the Winter's rearguard thin, 
And burst our buds and filmed our avenues, 
Almost before the Vallies could begin, 
With lillies and palm boughs we bore his 
triumph in. 

48 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 

And when in motley Autumn, the street lamps 
Globed in the yellow trees, saw many a mask 
Of lanterned children, whose barbaric camps, 
Rang bells, stole gates — a legendary task — 
Or ringed stray travellers round till they should 
ransom ask. 



Then where the streets were rustling like ravines, 

Thick buried in the blazon of the trees, 

That ranged in blackened rows their starved lines, 

Great hecatombs we heaped for sacrifice, 

Till all the smoky air blew like a curtained frieze. 

Then came the indoor, Christmas festival 
And all the world compacted to one close, 
And gifts and good cheer filled the fire-lit hall, 
And visible commerce with the sky arose 
By flights of angels singing triumph or repose. 

War stormed upon my youth. Its tides laid bare 
Life's hollow abysms and blood-oozed ways ; 
Camp, hospital, parade, the trumpet blare, 
The gleaming cincture of the steel arrays, 
With rumor rolled on rumor reached even 
boyhood's plays. 

49 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 

What memories of hearts at highest beat ! 
My father's armed departure: the brief word 
And silence of the stern, heroic heat ; 
His home return, half dying. What woes stirred 
For those who came not back unheard of, 
uninterred ! 

Well for the nurslings of such periods ! 
Greatness was in our blood and careless grace ; 
Gods walked the streets not knowing they were 

gods; 
The gaunt and weary watcher for his race 
Rode past our door and I, I looked on Lincoln's 

face. 

Then with the Warrior Soul of Innocence, 
I played at battles on the carpet laid, 
Dreamed out with symbol bullets the events 
Of charge, retreat, death, bivouac, ambuscade, 
And launched my paper fleets to either armies' aid. 

Then soaring higher from a world of fact 

The strolling player of a single house 

I went; and everywhere did I enact 

The Little Corporal with the moody brows, 

Or Alexander lightening god-like in carouse. 

50 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 

What companies I had of noble guests, 
Book-born, book-bred — The Knight, The Royal 

Dane, 
More real forms than any Time arrests : 
Infinite Queens, too, for each hour's reign 
In harmless, whole seraglio's floated through my 

brain. 

And She, the sole spectator of my mood, 
Laughed or grew vexed at every antic show, 
Would bid Napoleon to his simple food, 
Call Caesar from his bed before cock crow 
Or turn the closet key on lion Mirabeau. 

Come Muses with commemorative eyes 
Enter my chamber ! Books are there arow 
Memorials of the men ye have made wise, 
But neither they nor ye inspire me so 
As her bright, pictured face with features all aglow. 

She bore me, nursed me, taught me, was more me 
Than e'er I was myself. By her my deeds 
Swelled like the arras forms that living be 
When the wind stirs — or like sea-moved weeds — 
But now she has withdrawn what faded death 
succeeds. 



5i 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 

So when I bore our flag to that far South, 
Where famine, fever waited with worse foes, 
Light in her eyes, smiles on her sunny mouth 
And in her heart what prescience who knows 
Of the black flood of death that round about me 
rose. 

'Tis well ! She waits no more, and I have left 
A soul well exercised in love and hate, 
That in Life's conflict, masterless, bereft 
Like the proud Roman's will to none abate 
But bends to her who sits immortal beyond fate. 

Immortal ! No vain guess to solace pain ! 
Here is the warrant in my heart's new ease; 
Her earlier lost are now her lasting gain ; 
Her passionately mourned do bid her peace 
Till those she lacks shall come and crowd about 
her knees. 

Well do I know the philosophic lore 
Stoic, Platonic, or the baser creeds; 
They serve to pass the time, but more, ah more 
Of certainty is in our human needs, 
Our errand is not naught and not for naught our 
deeds. 



52 



ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 

Not leagues of desert earth or wastes of air, 
Not countless crossing stars that errant move, 
Not my unworthiness can bar me there, 
Against the faces of the ones I love 
That blazon me the path and beckon to the 
heights above. 

Not in vain planted God this longing hope, 
Not to no harbor did he launch his ships 
He ringed us not with doors that will not ope, 
Nor the last smile upon my mother's lips 
Quenched in immediate night and endless black 
eclipse. 

Mother ! Thou Mary of my prayers, be thou 

My intercessor in thy native sky ; 

My boyish strife scarce touched thy smiling brow, 

Will not my manhood God as kindly try ? 

For we are children all in that All Judging Eye ! 



53 



HYMN TO CYBELE 



Do I dream? Have I found 

The enwreathed pipe, wherein 

The persuasive strain pre-eminent 

Of antique music dwells ? 

Ah no, the mouths are stilled that filled its 

round. 
Marble the Muses stand 
In portico or hall 
With empty eyes. 

No passion can awake or make them warm ; 
No incantation bend their necks; 
Or from their pedestals 
Bring them with music sweeping limbs. 
Stilled phantoms? No! 
Ghosts might do something, 
Might thrill, might trance mankind : 

54 



HYMN TO CYBELE 

But these the Circle of the One's that Knew 
Are from our noisy day 
Divided and divorced. 

Yet we know much 

They told not or told false. 

Not from the Gods we came, 

Though in our blood their echo and their flame, 

But, as our wisest say, 

Out of the pulsing ooze ; 

And solely animal 

Need fear no last accompt. 

We know too, that this earth, 

The throne magnificent of man, 

Approached by orient embassies, 

Enringed with constellations marching past, 

Usurps no central place ; 

The outposts of eternity advanced 

Dwindle it into naught. 

Yet hope nor happiness is all of joy ; 

The shocks of terrible surprise 

Left and enlarge the soul ; 

Might lives in melancholy : 

In the miracle of death, 

In the dark background beyond the stars, 



55 



HYMN TO CYBELE 

The strong gods dwell. 

They are all relations, 

They know each other under each disguise, 

These are their marks, 

Strangeness of beauty, 

Greatness of air, 

Frank gazing eyes. 

Worship I pay them all : 

But vital most to me 

The Titan race. 

Their dynasty I hold still crowned, 

Not completed in one age, 

Nor confined to one landscape, 

Ida or Mount Dindymene, 

Or the Sicilian subterranean world. 

Wherever the fire-breathing sun 

Calls earth to crown itself with life, 

And the wide mesh of air 

O'erworks with flashing pictures, 

There the primeval kings 

Wake, work and reign. 

Over yon flame-edged hill 
By bleak pines sentinelled, 
An invading echo comes: 

56 



HYMN TO CYBELE 

No music this of unapparent hounds; 

More shrill, more wild, 

Drums, cymbals and the noise 

Of unknown instruments 

With dissonance of barbarous voices joined ! 

Now on the summit stands 

A single herald shape 

Naked, dark gesturing against the sun. 

Then the whole hill top into tumult breaks, 

Fantastic figures grouped, 

Or violently moved 

In dances of no law, 

To music of no tone ! 

And for a moment poised the medley waits, 

Then down the smooth slope pours, 

And the purged eye alone 

The mysterious pageant owns, 

The procession of a resurrected world, 

The priests of Cybele. 



So dread the din of those, 

So dazzling the dyed rout, 

That hardly do I know 

After this tumult what great calm is led ; 

Till sidewise upon mine 

The ominous eyeballs of a lion team 



57 



HYMN TO CYBELE 

Trance me to very stone ; 

Their bronze sides brush my limb 

And unregarding by me goes 

The incarnate apparition of the earth 

In woman form 

With turret circled brows 

Clad in all colors, but all colors light. 

Love first was made, Love first 

Then She Love's mightiest child, 

And oracles were set upon her lips, 

And divinations caverned in her eyes, 

Mother of Gods and men. 

With inward look, with weight 

Of passive energy, 

Behind her lions drawn 

She glides and disappears 

Into a thicket mid the folded hills. 



Now the drums again 
Beat and roll and boom, 
Cymbals clang, from the flutes 
Bruit of anger breaks ; 
All the train of Cybele 
Ring about that secret wood, 
Rapid circles weaving there, 
In the twilight gleam their limbs, 

58 



HYMN TO CYBELE 

Or their richly flaming robes 
Kindle all the deeper dusk : 
See ! One wrestles with an oak, 
One a silver flagon holds 
To a trunk-like twisted vine 
And the foamed flood gushes out; 
One apart stands from the rest, 
Magian of this magic brood, 
And the twigs he flings about 
Turn to yellow flickering snakes, 
Turn to velvet liveried deer : 
Now the torches lit 
Toss, and shuttle-like go flying, 
Figures, shadows multiplying 
O the world and vision new ! 



But hark ! What cry 

From midmost wood obscure 

The riot silences. 

Again ! and the night grows pale, 

And the earth shudders underneath : 

Though the trees are green and the sap is 

new, 
The leaves rustle, crisped, sere! 
With stretched wing the black bat swoops, 
And all that holy throng 

59 



HYMN TO C YBELE 

In wild and vivid act, 

Are palsied and are dumb. 

What agony in the lonesome wood 

Spreads such eclipse, 

Such presage sends? 



Stifled at first 

Comes the inarticulate voice, 

By intermitted pangs of child-birth forced, 

And the roar of the lions answers ; 

Then for a moment comes 

Almost a cry of joy ; 

This soon is hushed and then 

A woman's voice imperious in alarm 

Thrills to the roots of life. 

"Kronos" it calls 

'Tapetus, Oceanos" 

Companions, counsellers, 

I bid you hither ! Come ! 

A peril threatens our race ; 

Danger is sprung from my side. 

In the illumination of my mind 

The future appears, 

I know our fate ! 

Ah, must it be and through me! 

O mighty brothers, help ! 

60 



HYMN TO CYBELE 

Without the night is tranquilized by stars ; 
The writhing circle of that rout is stilled, 
Is silent, shrunk in shadow of the wood ; 
Not of the conclave or the counsel they ; 
But down through levels of the air, I see 
A deity descending. O superb 
His face of ancient beauty and his form 
Lustrous. He enters slowly in the wood 
And the oaks fold before him as a gate. 
Rapidly over the enringing hills 
A figure comes, urged by the fiery light 
That pulses through his body palpably 
And follows. Then from out the distant lake 
Or from the waterfall or from the mist 
Condensed, another rises, silver wrought, 
Serene, and the wood closes after him. 



Vanishes now to my eye 
The outer world and I see 
That presence chamber alone, 
The goddess recumbent there 
On lions pillowed; beside 
On a leafy couch of the wood 
The miraculous infant laid, 
And the seated synod of gods 
Wonderful, wondering, 

61 



HYMN TO CYBELE 

Waiting their summoner's word. 

Roofed from the stars is the glade 

Girdled thick with obscure 

Bulks of absolute gloom, 

But it glows and glimmers and gleams 

With the life of those lords of light, 

And most from the goddess herself 

For as she utters her plaint 

Of remembrance of prophecy, 

Her varying splendor illumes 

All the circle about, 

Her pride stamps a ruddy glow 

On face and foliage and rock, 

Her fear spreads a pallid dream 

Unearthly over the scene 

And the light of the other gods 

With her waxes or wanes. 



Her voice arises 

Dreamily distant 

Throbbing its way almost without speech 

"Kronos, thou keepest the air, 

And knowest the succession of the stars ; 

Thou nursest the eagle in thy lap, 

And loosest the thunder 

Guideless to wander and beget 

62 



HYMN TO CYDELE 

Eternal progenies of echoing sound ; 

Behold me here 

Beheld thy child and mine ! 

Kronos dost thou not fear? 

Thou knowest not the word, 

Thou knowest not the thing ; 

Nor thou Oceanos, silver veined 

Nor thou, fire rolling Iapetus; 

Ye forge from yourselves innumerable 

And novel births, 

Ye deem yourselves Creators, 

Origin and orb of all ! 

Masters of changes ye yourselves must change! 

Wisdom is born in me 

With the birth of this child, 

This your dethroner, 

The baby Zeus. 

A fury falls on me 

I know the future, 

I see you, ye gods 

Dim, dowerless, discrowned : 

Nor yet disloyal I 

To our dynasty of mighty equals, 

To our society of freedom ; 

Compact of chaos are we whence we came, 

Impulses, instincts, agitations, 

These are our being : 



HYMN TO CYBELE 

We have made beautiful 

The uncreated void, 

By giving life, not law ; 

But now there arises 

One jealous, invincible, strong ; 

He shall confine the flowing world, 

And set in order the elements ; 

Splendors unknown to us shall reign, 

And gradations of beauty inconceivable 

Bloom in our abandoned house; 

But linked with these shall be 

Inevitable wrongs, 

Destinies of unimagined sin, 

Deaths and a final doom. 

Pity me O, ye gods ! 

Pity the mother who knows 

A despot and a conqueror in her child ! 

Yet am I proud ; 

I have given birth to greatness, 

Daring and supremacy issue from me; 

I fawn on you for forgiveness O ye gods 

But he, he is my King." 

Fell the fiat, ruled the doom ! 
And that audience of gods 
Uttered no protesting moan: 
The symbol and the stamp of Fate 

64 



HYMN TO CYBELE 

On her mighty visage shone : 

But they burned in steady wrath, 

They who on those woodland thrones 

Rulers sat and rebels rose ; 

War, war, war was in their look. 

Risen from primeval strife 

Their being born for battle, leaped 

Truce of many days, and hailed 

A future that should know their might 

Proved against a foeman proud. 

Quick as a vision of lightning, 
Sudden as a wind that in Summer 
Rises and ruins and passes, 
Those actors doomed but immortal 
Break up their conclave and vanish, 
And the theatre of the woodland 
Is lost again in the darkness, 
It's passion and picture faded. 

The grey designs of dawn 
Fret and frost the eastern dark, 
The last star pales and hides, 
On a noteless landscape known 
The common day comes in, 
Slopes the wheat field to the brook, 



65 



HYMN TO CYBELE 

Spreads the meadow clover sweet, 

The familiar farm house sends 

Up its wreath of morning smoke : 

And it was — so it is. 

Save my heart that bears a weight 

Save my mind that haunted glows 

With a Vision, with a Wonder, with a Strife 



66 



HYMN TO OCEANOS 



The shadow of the ocean in itself 

Grey, hoary, girdles me : 

No flash of breaking foam 

No vivid tint of the green concave crest 

These under-levels know ; 

Shadowy swims each red or silver fish ; 

Colorless, formless, void 

The unfathomable planes 

Are blotted by their own translucent gleam : 

Yet still there grows on me 

A sense of thronging life, 

Eyes multiplied and dim designs of features, 

And myriad essences 

Held in eternal hurry motionless. 

The waters fleet before my face, 
The clouded circuit clears, and lo ! 
Certain in the lapsing dream, 

67 



HYMN TO OCEANOS 

Starts the vision of a vale, 
Lit by moving, luminous 
Meteor-monsters, scaly clad. 
On the floor, in attitudes 
Of a hundred varying moods, 
Gleam a cirque of woman forms : 
Born from the ocean waves they bear 
The waves' image in their looks. 
Sombre, massy, tremulous, 
Wandered o'er with lucid change, 
Everyone a different stamp 
Carries of the myriad sea ; 
Irrisistable in weight, 
With deep cloven breasts, and limbs 
Bronzed in their flowing might 
Shadows one. Another has 
The swift impetus that leaps 
Breaks, and makes a line of foam ; 
Like the current-caught sea grass 
Waving, wayward, serpentine, 
Is another; so they toss 
Tumult tranced upon the floor. 
About the cirque at intervals 
Single figures, pillared rise, 
Guardians of the heaving mass ; 
Midmost of them all uprears 
A being of another birth! 

68 



HYMN TO OCEANOS 

Boyish, but of lofty mien ; 
Whose unborrowed blazon burns 
Steady, mid those shifting, wan, 
Watery veined sea-satellites. 
Prisoner preeminent, 
His gesture and his lordly act 
Breathes command, authority, 
Godship — smothered from surmise. 



Hark ! his voice outleaps 

Metallic-treble, strident, resonant. 

"O ye ocean nymphs 

Me past all memory have ye overawed ; 

Prisoned me in your arms 

Made me the slave of servitors. 

With processional sameness have ye swept with me 

Through these monotonous realms, 

Nor left me the privilege of solitude, 

To inwardly beget 

Thoughts that shall conquor. 

Yet am I of a different strain from ye ! 

The anger of ambition 

Swells in me, bids me break 

Your soft and flowing chains. 

I know there are other realms than these : 

Splendors that not inhabit here 

69 



HYMN TO OCEANOS 

Bend and beckon me to dominion : 
Winged, floating shapes 
Bear messages to me : 
A creating fire is in me : 
I know that ye, ye nymphs, 
Are but the blanks of nature, 
Empty faces and forms unequal 
To my aspiring might. 
Bow, bow to my supremacy 
And proclaim me your master!" 

Sweet and tinkling melodies 
From innumerable nymphs 
Mixed with rippling laughter comes. 
" Passion-hearted pupil ours 
Gilded Zeus! Purple Zeus! 
What thy woe? What thy plaint? 
Art thou rebel against Love? 
Do our kisses bitter seem? 
Thou wert given to us first 
When thy ruddy, chubby limbs 
Strangely blooming in this dimness 
Strengthless on our bosoms lay. 
And we quarreled for thy care, 
Catching thee from breast to breast. 
Then, when grown a space thou turnedst 
Looks of grave import on us 

70 



HYMN TO OCEANOS 

Wise, infantine, innocent, 

Thee a coral throne we made, 

Danced before it, hand in hand ; 

Brought thee shells whose curving valves 

Flushed with colors like thine own, 

Tribute of the ocean caves. 

Older yet and lithely springing, 

Rosier still from heel to head, 

Rounding to thy orb of youth, 

Thee we watched, taught, trained — 

Showing thee with oaring arm 

Easily to cleave the wave, 

Guiding thee to tame and ride 

All those wastes in visitation 

The grey monsters of these depths, 

Exercised thy slender limb 

Racing, wrestling ever with thee : 

Now thou growest strange and great 

Unto us thy playfellows 

Baby Zeus ! 

Look ! our swift infectious laughter, 

Dimples all the ocean deep 

At thy folly! 

As if by the laughter summoned, 
Suddenly into that circle comes 
An intruding shape. 

7i 



HYMN TO OCEANOS 

Unlike those mutable nymphs, 

Fixed architures of fraility, 

But even as Zeus himself 

Original in solid fire; 

Yet of a differing mould 

From the smooth, slender, adolescent god, 

Massy, irregular, with 

Wide shoulders and deep dented curve of back. 

To whom the wrathful Zeus 

Shrills forth a cry of welcome enmity. 

" New born to these sparse realms, 

mighty visitant, 

Thou comest in good time. 

1 love thy war-loomed front, 
And would with thee hold terms; 
But now thou seest me scorned : 

Thou hearest the ocean nymphs deride my rule 

With them I not contend, 

Unwrestling women forms, 

But thou art a selected opponent, 

Thou art the rival I have dreamed ; 

Submit and hail me king 

Or try my might in war, 

Life's best embraces feel!" 

In eager expectation, Zeus 

Hangs half suspended and with poising eye 

Pauses in calculation of his blow. 



72 



HYMN TO OCEAN OS 

While there with folded arms, 

And level and immovable regard, 

Waits that war-welcomed guest. 

Ah, ah ! they meet, they close, 

And at the shock those nymphs 

Re-enter their old element and emerge. 

Now is the strain of war, 

See, how their limbs are laced and interlocked, 

And, seemingly, they grow 

Huger with heaving muscles momently, 

Until the strength of each, 

Met by an equal and an even strain, 

Holds them in balance and then wreathed bulks. 

In awful action and intensity 

Seem but embraced in easy attitudes. 

But now that wide built one 

In wide intrusion wins a little space 

And slowly back Zeus droops, 

Crushed in the close and unaccustomed grasp. 

Alas, must he be conquered? 

Must fall that Lord of distances and dreams? 

Ah no ! His limbs revive, 

With an imperious cry 

He presses on his foe, 

And slipping from the closure of those arms, 

With sudden shifted grasp, 

And main advantage, momently increased, 



73 



HYMN TO OCEAN OS 

Backward he bends the bulk that overbore, 

Till the wide exultation of his eyes 

Climb to the zenith of his foe's regard, 

And with the ending effort of the strife 

He tears the giant loose, 

And, as his limbs relax, 

Dashes him on the shaken ocean floor. 

Listen his lofty cry 

Of lyric victory, 

As glittering he stands 

From such encounter stainless and composed. 

While the ocean nymphs throng round 

Prostrate or in procession paying, 

An adoration to authority. 

The walled waves divide and flow 

To a massy linteled gate, 

Foamed and overwreathed and worked 

With embossed and carved things, 

Garlands, foliage, faces, gems ; 

Mid of which the architrave 

Bursts into a frieze of forms, 

White against an ebon field, 

Endlessly processional. 

Rings a trumpet note, and then 

Comes, majestically comes, 

Presence of that under world 



74 



HYMN TO OCEANOS 

Inaccessible, serene, 
Heart of all the plunging floods, 
Oceanos. Lo, his car, 
Where erect and single he 
Stands in calm benignity, 
But a mighty sea shell seems, 
Outward pearl, but glowing rich 
Inwardly with myriad hues. 
Bronzed his twin horses are, 
Silver maned, with nostrils red 
And eyes mildly humanized. 
On the struggling multitude 
Nymphs and warrior gods, there falls 
Silence. Round those smoothed floors 
Paces silver footed Peace. 
Speaks Oceanos. " What this strife ? 
What alarmed figures rush 
Rumor-tongued about my realms ? 
Flushed, defiant Zeus, thou standest, 
And beneath thy feet Hephaestos 
Lieth vanquished ! Why thy wrath 
O thou son of Cybele ? " 

"Hephaestos!" 

Gushes the voice of Zeus in gladness 

"Rival no more, arise! 

Dreams have betokened thee to me. 



75 



HYMN TO OCEAN OS 

Now am I all completed to perform 

The conceptions of my soul. 

A vision arises before me ; 

The masonry of a world 

Peremptorily dictated by my will, 

Wrought by thy shaping hands. 

Thou art my mate, Hephaestos! 

Thine to upbuild and mine to animate 

The breathing whole that shall be ! 

I see thee at thy work, 

Where on the beaches of chaos 

Worlds are wrecked singly or in long drifts 

driven. 
I see thee set the orbed block 
In circles straightening ever from the eye, 
Till the aerial flight 
Of many-bastioned walls, 
Beats back the chaos on all sides, 
Gradual at the base but growing up 
To the all-vaulting, all-revealing dome : 
Then the interior canopy 
And all the shafts in endless avenues, 
Of giant echo hanging far aloof, 
I see thee build, shaping the elements 
That make their many aspects. Fiery some 
Perturbed mid all peace ; of waters more 
Hollowly hurled cylyndrical, 

76 



HYMN TO OCEAN OS 

Diaphanous, crystalline, delicate. 

Wandering these thronged obscurities of light 

I see thee move, and work 

Infinite designs upon the massy blocks; 

Smoothing with verdue some ; 

Embossing others with the minature 

Of chaos — tangled forest — till the shafts 

Climb rich unto the roof ; 

And even the airy interstices 

Thou crowdest with filmy clouds. 

Then is my turn ! 

The gilded lightning from the Titans grave 

Goes wondering through the frame : 

Winds too, I loose, and then 

Within thy circling barrier, 

In the two gateways opposite, 

I set two figures — one 

A giant of sheer gold 

Who from his quivering bow, shaft after shaft, 

Arrow on arrow, through thy building sends 

To take the vast interior with their light, 

To touch the lucid dome and make it live ; 

The while his opponent 

A region bulk imprisoned in decay, 

Like armory lets loose, 

And so continually 

Light and Dark met in various fortuned war, 



77 



HYMN TO OCEAN OS 

Create with variable art 
New architectures ever from the old. 
Last then of all I give the word 
For absolute life — and lo ! 
The fabric springs forever. Its starred shapes 
Climb to their gorgeous summits and sink down ; 
From the mid centre to the last 
Outlying tower by the night licked up 
It moves, yet with the change 
The vaulted wonder is not over thrown ! 
The prodigy ! The glory ! O I live ! 
Comrade, away! The great work waits us! 
Come!" 



73 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION. 



Again the spell of phantasy is on me ; 

I climb the woodland path in spirals winding, 

And peer on either hand in dim recesses 

Lit by the torches of the trees flung downward, 

But half above is haze and half is forest : 

Till the bare upland, rock and red earth, reach I 

A platform by the hanging hills encircled. 

Beyond which cloven in the rock a cavern 

Opens — and, halted, wait I on the threshold, 

For on me fall a new, mysterious vision. 



Silver shafts with golden coronals, 
Rise two birch trees there above my path. 
Look ! they turn to mist, transform and are 
Beauteous beings of an ancient race. 
And the one, a glory masculine, 



79 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

Slender, glowing from his head to heels, 
With the Autumn pomp and passion dyed, 
Stands before that caverned vestibule, 
Stands in noble ease, and him I know 
Fearless traveller of the future, Zeus. 

But that better phantom there 

By his side is feminine ; 

White or flushed with rainbow hues 

Like the cascade's tinted foam 

Climbs her figure up in curves 

To the rival rounded breasts, 

To the dark crowned, haughty head. 

Scarlet blooming is her mouth, 

Vivid, gorgeous, sensitive, 

And her large eyes swim in light. 

"Hera," so came the word of the king of the 

new Immortals, 
Here is Porphyrin's home — here is the haunt ot 

existence. 
Him must I win, for the ultimate secret is in him. 
Thou must bring to my aid the wit and the 

armor of woman, 
Lures and wiles and woven song and the dazzle 

of beauty: 

80 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

But at first be thou hid while I adventure him 

singly." 
Speaks the god and straightway vanishes that 

girlish presence 
Roseate prints in the air half showing where she 

is hidden, 
And a wonderful promise of music ready to 

waken. 

Come then out of that cavern, 

Come with dances and singing, 

Beings brightening the daylight, 

Over-wreathed with laughter, 

The Hours innocent of sorrow. 

Sweep they the hearth and the threshold, 

Wood they bear in that upblazes, 

Wine they set out on a table, 

All the while moving in rhythm, 

Spontaneous syllables singing. 

Swift in act as an eagle's rush 
On the swimming shoals of the silver fish 
From his higher level the god stoops down, 
And the startled Hours, dart here — dart 

there, 
In baffled escaping intricacies, 

81 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

And some in awe of his mien and might, 
Come forward with timid looks of love, 
While others scatter and call their king, 
Till the tinkling echoes of iron crags 
Ring and re-utter "Porphyrion." 



Then from the chaos-chambered depths of that 

gloom-curtained cavern comes 
A strange, uncertain bulk of life, half struggling 

into god or man : 
Gross, animal, indecent, wild, his rugged limbs 

and hoary head 
Are dyed with lees of wine, or stained with forest 

rust, or reddish earth ; 
A light-emitting wand he bears of metal strange 

and curious work, 
And so with yawns and rubbed eyes he rolls into 

the main of light, 
And sees that god-guest standing there, in purple 

panoplied and gold, 
But unregarding sits him down and calls his 

frail ministers, — 
"Ho! bring me wine — pour wine and turn the 

great boar on the roasting spit. 
And comrade on the threshhold there sit down, 

sit down, and drink, and drink." 



82 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

Ho, Ho, the flagon vessel sent 

In voyage twixt two thirsty shores ! 

Ho, Ho, the jest and merriment, 

The friendships sworn, the secrets told ! 

The stately Zeus unbends and grows 

A happy equal of his host, 

Who mellow, easy in his cups 

Yields to the civilizing wine, 

Till last upon the table snores 

Porphyrion, dead to wile or force. 



Outstretched on the board 

In the Titan's clutch 

Lies his serpentine sceptre, 

Glowing with fire 

Dulled, iridescent, 

Potent of life. 

And Zeus triumphant 

Reaches to seize it, 

But back recoils 

At the shock of its touch. 



But at that touch the vision hoarding darkness 
Opens its gate and lets the phantoms forth 
Threatening and grisly — faces figures passions, 

83 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

Tapestried they show on the background of the 

cave. 
Thin, wannish fires and phosphorescent torches 
Glide and go out in the hollow of that hill; 
Golden voices ring there, sing- there the Sirens, 
All the cavern thrills, fills with a baleful life; 
Armies bloody-bannered meet in awful struggle ; 
Death himself, unveiled at last, stares with 

palled eyes. 

Zeus thou has trod so far with a dauntless step, 
Now wilt thou shudder and turn as the omens 

throng ? 
Spectres of ruin and doom may blur the sun, 
Livid decay may convulse the limbs of the 

earth, 
But on thy path thou must go with fieriest zeal ! 
Life may draw with it death but thou must 

create, 
Thought may darken to dreams but thou wilt 

make wise, 
To the uttermost rings of being thy force shall 

send 
The whirl of thy worlds, in impetus action, strife, 
That the maw of Death get a splendid ravin at 

least ! 



84 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

The fire in that cave burns low 

And beside it Porphyrion sprawls ; 

Flickering shadows like dogs, 

Ring him, and watch him, asleep. 

Him, too, intoxicate once 

With hopes, with visions, with wine 

Daring designs lifted up ; 

Now, all wisdom attained, 

Only oblivion he seeks : 

And beside him his snake-waving wand 

Lives and protects his repose. 

Rudely his slumber Zeus dispels and shaking off 

his stupor 
Porphyrion staggers to his feet. In fiery adjuration 
Zeus, moved from his steady mood, grows pliant 

and implores him. 
"Show me the real realities — teach me the final 

wisdom, 
For in thy mind the outward world mirrors its 

revealation." 
With grave, unconscious majesty Porphyrion 

gazes on him, 
Then lifting up that living wand as if in 

incantation 



85 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

He beckons to the inner dusk. It parts and lo! 

before them 
Rolls to the centre of that cave a mystic, radiant 

vision 
Wide spreading in the circuit night unutterable 

splendors. 

Tis a crystal ball, like a bubble clear, 
Yet rainbow-hued as its surface turns, 
And within it prisoned three forms appear, 
Girlish figures of carved grace ; 
They laugh as their sphere-home about them 

spins, 
But its changing round is their world complete; 
Their milky arms wreath each other about, 
They whirl in dance or they stand composed, 
And their looks go forth with affection sweet, 
For their hearts at the heart of the secret of all 
Know nothing but kindness and love and play. 



"Zeus," the Titan cries, "thou seest 
The free rulers of all measure! 
While their crystal is unbroken 
All the world must thrill with childhood. 



86 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

Though obedient to my sceptre 
Yet I am their servant only. 
Nothing, nothing seek to know I, 
Plunged in reverie, inspired 
By their pure-toned drifting shadow 
By their motion and their music." 



"Come to a test," cried the king, "I have music 
more suited 

To your blood than the poor, puling strain of 
these girls ! 

Be you judge ! If I lose, I will give you this belted 

Bronze sword with whole histories upon it en- 
graved 

And you ! What gift pledge you ? Your scep- 
tre ? Deny you ? 

Then give me yon dark gleaming boar spear for 
mine. 

Ho, my spirit — without there ! Wake, voluptu- 
ously torture 

With the passion poured notes of thy smooth 
throbbing throat. 

These rivals — this Titan and win me my wager. 

He ends and the voice comes of Hera unseen 



87 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

"Where the tree ringed hollow is a crystal urn 

The woodland fountain is cool — is cool. 

And the moon's shafts splinter at the oak trees 

root. 
The breakers plash and the foam flashes 

white 
And shadows lie thick on height and vale ! 
But O, not for me — not for me — not for me ! 
My brain is fevered — my body burns 
My waving arms turn East, turn West ! 
I print my kisses on the flowing air, 
But in vain ! Ah, in vain ! All in vain ! " 

O Beauty's on the hillside bare 

And Glory's in the glade, 
But now gainst Nature's fairest fair 

A rival is arrayed. 
Beyond the roseate tinted breath 

That is the mountains boon, 
Beyond the orchard's blossomed wreath, 

Beyond the wood-bird's tune, 
Aye better than the Season's march 

Across the forest floor, 
A being comes — the night's dimmed arch 

Knows her and nothing more. 

SB 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

Upon the threshhold Hera stands, her form 
Nude to her heels, but like the new-born sun 
Half veiled in its own revealation. Gold 
The vision, save the milkier foaming breasts 
And the night shadowing tresses. O what 

play 
Of meaning, of enchantment on her mouth ! 
What undiscovered empires in her eyes! 
Poised as if flying forward — in each line 
Implicit surrender — daring, passionate 
The temptress waits- — waits for the spell to 

work. ^. 

Then the Titan to his feet arises 
Stands dilated — stands with quivering limbs, 
Widened nostrils, eyes of rolling fire 
Stammering tongue, with passion all possessed 
"Yield me the girl, O give her to me Master 
All that is mine shall be at thy command — " 
"Mine then thy sceptre — that alone can buy her, 
Quick, be quick, or she fades in air again." 
Then unto that Subtle One, Porphyrion tosses 

his sceptre, 
And madly throws himself forward to capture and 

clasp his booty. 



89 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

But with one blow of the 

All-ruling wand, 
Zeus shatters that crystal 

Prisoning sphere, 
And its inmates step forth 

On the cavern floor, 
While shrilling in triumph 

Zeus fades in air, 
And vanishes with him 

Hera away. 

But O, those presences of blooming childhood 
Whose dewy freshness filled but late the cavern, 
What grace, what lustre they have lost by 

freedom ! 
Hags, Queens of Eld, they shuffle bent and 

crooked 
Toothless, bleared with gaunt and skinny 

bosoms. 
Up flings the firelight, making more fantastic 
Those granny-gossips crouching chilled above it 
Horrible conspirators each the other hating 
Then one sings and two in choric answer 
Chaunt out the laws new made for earth and 

heaven 



90 



HYMN TO PORPHYRION 

" Sisters, sisters, what is ours to do ? " 
"The mesh to weave where the Future is 

caught ! " 
"Sisters, what things shall glitter in our net?" 
" Gods and stars and golden crowned kings ! " 
" Sisters, what lure shall draw these wonders in?" 
" Dreams they are and illusions they chase ! " 
"Say, O sisters what reward is theirs ?" 
"The winding sheet, the worm and the dark! " 
"Sisters, choose we now our symbols true! " 
"The owl, the toad and the circling snake!" 

*aer- 

On a sudden mountain steep, 
Where the fledged rocks o'erhang, 
Is the god Porphyrion flung, 
And he hears that dolorous song, 
And he sees the golden years 
Glitter downward to their death, 
While in dulled, mechanic round 
The new rings of Being rise, 
And the ruin fills his heart — 
Break, O heart — O mind be dead ! 



91 



ODE ON THE REVIVAL OF COLOR 
IN ARCHITECTURE. 



I. 



Where are the dances of Laconian maids? 

How are their flower garlands fallen without 
increase? 
Ah, slowly o'er some widening Lethe fades 

The vales and views of Greece ! 
Here are clear skies ; here is the glad day-birth 
Our sunsets matching with the Autumn leaf 
On purple hills are piled the russet sheaves ; 
Ringing and lusty is our harvest mirth; 
Yet something fails us from our unbelief; 
The exiled Genius grieves, 
Because our hearths are left without a guard ; 
Because no altars, garlanded for good, 
Range by our doors with richest offering; 
Because no hymns rise neath the forest 
roof; 

92 



REVIVAL OF COLOR IN ARCHITECTURE 

We are withdrawn from Nature and grown hard ; 
Thankless we gather in our livelihood, 
And the mild deities that round us ring 
Are driven to hold aloof: 
Then how for us the vivid, gracious hours, 
Laconian dances or Thersalian flowers. 



II 

O for the hour when Athens, opulent, 

At top of Fortune's sunset colored wave, 
With pomp and tumult toTRe Piraeus sent 

Her envoy to the grave, 
The boy-god Alcibrades. He stood 

Naked upon his galley. Gold, O gold, 
Not marble were his limbs. In the winds 
flaw 
His hair moved like a banner stained with blood, 
And the blue aegis glittered in his hold, 
And o'er the land he saw 
The rosy fabric of the Parthenon, 

Like Dawn just opening on a synod, so 
The gods sat throned, and let through 
women's eyes 
Their beauty to the blood of Athens come, 



93 



ODE ON THE REVIVAL OF 

And farther on the armored olives shone, 

And vales were shadowed, where he knew the 
flow 
Of crystal, touched with dances braided 
dyes, — 
And knew this was his home — 
And gave the word for Sicily, and, sooth, 
Launched on the sea his armament of youth. 



in 

Our home is glorious too, O friend, if Spring 

Touches its chambers, or full Summer fills, 
Or Autumn with its belting ring on ring 

About us glows and thrills : 
Nor tenantry of triumph and of rule 

Are wanting, lofty men, and, passion-pure, 
Women more roseate than Laconian girls ; — 
Love gives the edicts of her purple school, 
And Strife his burnished athletes bids endure, 
And Fate the distaff twirls : 
Yet some etherial splendor has not shone, 

Yet some o'er-mastering trumpet has not filled 
Our groves with epic echoes that make men 
Heroic and immortal guerdons give; 



94 



COLOR IN ARCHITECTURE 

Art, the great heir of all has not his own 
To wanton with his substance and rebuild, 
And so renew to Time beyond our ken 
Our day that does but live: 
But the inspired angel waits and hopes 
To forge our deeds as Nature fires our copes. 



IV 

O happy poet, nature thee affords 

Her ornament direct of tree and stone, 
Thou dos^not need to give reluctant words 

A lustre not their own : 
The topless oak from its lone forest borne, 
Rich with its hoard of years, to thee resigns 
Its strength, and in thy choir its branches 
sing; 
And the digged metals from earth's bowels torn, 
And marbles mantling into rich designs, 
Into thy fabrics spring : 
Lo, on thy musings rise the flowered weeds, 
The temples and the turrets of the hills, 
The windowed west with all its wreaths of 
flame, 
And the blue shadow rolled along our 
shore, — 

95 



ODE ON THE REVIVAL OF 

Yet not the less the harmonious spirit needs, 
To stay the glory that the moment kills, 
To place on nature that is ne'er the same 
A more apparent law, 
And new its altering elements arrange, 
To body forth a thing that need not change. 



Of fortunate augury I deem the chance 
That gave it to thy genius to create 
A fitting home for flowers and the dance 

(If these be separate:) 
Soon on our air shall bloom the emblazoned 
walls, 
Sprung as if flowers rooted, or a dream 
Of sunrise into masoned sureness made; 
And mid the blushing of its coronals 
Figures of maidens silverly shall gleam 
Undecked and unarrayed: 
More than alive thy fabric's front shall breathe, 
Frank in the daylight; and a mellow core 
To moonlights mystical beatitudes ; 
And men shall drink its inspiration in, 
And women grow in beauty and bequeathe 



96 



COLOR IN ARCHITECTURE 

Splendors unto their children. It shall pour 
A heightened strain above our haunted moods ; 
And coming years shall win 
Laconian visionary dances, there 
Revived, and flowers that knew Thessatian air. 



97 



DIRGE FOR SUMMER 



What fervent and funereal pipes are set 
To shape one ditty from the shifting air? 
What notes of wild reluctance, what regret 

Sobs through the tree-trunks bare? 
Alas ! I did not know the earth had lost 
Its treasury of Autumn in the trees, 
Its golden sunset's ingot-heaped mine, — 
Fool of unfathomed moods, I had almost 
Forgot to challenge the chill-changed breeze, 

Or ask what star did shine : 
But too loud is the wind, too cold its breath 
For longer dreaming in the open fields; — 
Grown fuller have the forests' flutes and ta'en 
An organ energy for angrier blasts. 
I wake, and see the Summer struck with death, 
Spite of her gaudy armor and gold shields, 

98 



DIRGE FOR SIMMER 



I see her eyes alter and film with pain, 

And death her limbs recasts, 
Till on the hills she stretches wan and grey 
In the divinity of her decay. 



II 

Ay, thou art dead, Summer, and now art borne, 
In pastoral state, with sylvan retinue, 
Through the sere stubble, through the woods 
forlorn, 

Paths leaf-obliterate through ; 
And hearsed harvests follow in thy track, 
In heaped wains heavy with yellow sheaves 
And purple vintage overcolored, 
And the bronze-builded reapers do not lack, 
Nor girls with aprons bulging out with leaves 

For burial favors shed ; 
Askance the kine look from their pastures chill, 
The trembling sheep bleat from their ridged 

slopes, 
The barren woods are wider for thy path 
That fettered thee with foliage in thy prime, — 
So, with such pomp, with dirges that do fill 
Earth, thou dost go, until before thee opes 



99 



DIRGE FOR SUMMER 



Some fathomless cavern that the forest hath, 

Where all the acts of Time 
A shadowy empire and existence keep, 
Divulged only to the eye of sleep. 



ill 

Summer, farewell! Vows for thee I have paid 

By every altar, oak-built or of elm, 

And offered incense to appease thy shade 

Through thy once fragrant realm ; 
In empty lanes and alleys dispossessed, 
I breathe thy name with a funeral prayer, 
Adding all adorations of regret ; 
I mark the places where I was thy guest, 
Folded in thine inmost embrace, or where 

On thy throne I was set. 
Whate'er of glory through thy realm was 

blown, 
What shapes were vivid in thy vanished 

sway, 
Rise to me, and my hopes and visions dead ; 
And the aged, withered grasses do I press, 
Where, idly under thy oak pillars thrown, 
Oft have I dreamed an age into a day, 



IOO 



DIRGE FOR SIMMER 






Or through thy gorgeous halls hung overhead, 

Cloud-portalled palaces, 
O'er barriers and bridges of the gods, 
Wandered at will through untold periods. 



IV 

Farewell ! Farewell ! Ah ! not for thee alone 

I echo iterations o'er again ; 

True, thou hast gone, but with thee, too, is 

flown 
One more supreme for pain ; 
That heel-winged, happy moulded, divine 

shape, 
That blown, abandoned image of a god, 
Glad youth, has faded from my fainting heart ; 
Following thy footsteps from me did he 'scape, 
Therefore, I follow wherever thou hast trod, 

In hope he may up-start. 
Little cared I for seasons when with him 
Lightly and lyrically passed I on, 
When unreal shapes and colors of romance 
Clothed the misclouded, miscreated earth, 
When never sky grew dull or forest dim, 
But up we rose as from a horizon, 



IOI 



DIRGE FOR SLMMER 



To make Aurora and the hours dance, 

And give the world new birth. 
But he is gone — and with him all he gave, 
And fitly lay I him in Summer's grave. 



102 



THE FUNERAL OF THE FORESTS 



Forests, renowned forests, forests old, 
Or on the flanks of mighty summits growing, 
Or roofing rivers with your overflowing 
Live labyrinths, slow unravelling, fold by fold, 
Your touch uplifts me, I attain the stature 
Of your lost race, the Titan kings of earth ; 
Let not one leaf fall of your life O Nature 
But my lips press it, not one kindled birth 
Be from your bosom loosed of flower or flame, 
But blush by blush my blood records the same ! 
And as one knows, ah ! knows so well some face 
Knows every mantling glow and every dint, 
That the mere image keeps the loved one's place, 
So shall I win your secrets, hint by hint. 
In answering echoes of a lover's mood, 
Tremulous I stand before each budded thing, 



103 



THE FUNERAL OF THE FORESTS 

Or sobered move amid your wedded boughs, 
Or when the banquet-bidden, Bacchanal 

brood, 
Your wine-dyed festal populace round you 

fling, 
Mad I make revel in your ancient house. 



II 

O face of Autumn on the flying hills, 
Crowned with aerial gold and floating glory, 
My heart aches that thou too must be a story 
Like Helen's beauty and the Achaians ills ! 
Aye, thou must pass! In every copse an altar 
Burns with a yellow, incense-drifting wreath, 
In dim illumined glades the red leaves falter, 
Like beads told over by the bed of death, 
And look ! the forest frontage flickers now, 
A fiery summons runs from bough to bough, 
Like dream in dream arising, mood on mood, 
The immovable whole fabric does not stir, 
But with the mystic symbols of its blood 
All the years passion does enregister. 
This is the very Presence of the Past, 
Tis Memory's picture of her deeds decayed, 



104 



THE FUNERAL OF THE FORESTS 

But O, the winds rustle to ruin it; 

The tarnished coinage from the trees is cast, 

Space by space blackens, the long beacons 

fade, 
Fade and go out and leave the land unlit. 



Ill 

Gods of Decadence, all your trumpets blown, 
All the long triumph of your armies ended, 
Now to whose keeping is the earth commended? 
Must the soul fight unaided and alone? 
The empires of the immortal minded mortals 
Build to like toppling show for like eclipse, 
Carthage is vanished, by Balclutha's portals 
The wind calls loudly to unanswering lips. 
Yet still the Ideal Image urges on, 
The way may alter yet the goal be won : 
Mid fallen columns and arches frail and bare 
Sits the throned shape of man's eternal Spouse, 
Safer from ruin, as the frost-cleared air 
Leaves the stars larger for the unloaded boughs : 
And when the stars, the stars themselves, our 

Fates 
Spread in discolored paintings o'er the sky, 

105 



THE FUNERAL OF THE FORESTS 

And the last Autumn of All-nature comes, 
Then where their blazon was, where op'ed their 

gates, 
The inspired faces of Futurity 
Shall sweet disclose from new-discovered homes. 



106 



ERRATA 

Page 2, line 3. For "Placios" read "Palacios" 

" 3, " 5. For " Edward" read ''Edgar" 

" 19, " 24. For "evied" read " envied" 

" ?)7> " 2 °- For " reason" read ''season" 

" 47, " 9. For "Proud control" read 
" Proud to control" 

Page 84, line 4. For "Golden" read "Goblin" 

" 84, " 7. For "palled" read "pallid" 

" 84, " 8. For " has " read " hast " 

" 92, " 6. For "Our" read "And" 

" 93, " 6. For "Thersalian" read 
"Thessalian" 

Page 93, line 11. For "Alcibrades" read "Al- 
cibiades " 

Page 97, line 5. For "Thessatian" read 
"Thessalian " 



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